It was the first day of spring yesterday and in Pittsburgh, where I’m visiting my son Toby and his family, it was raining. The rain gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite spring poems, which describes the world as “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful.” It also describes the freshness I feel as I play with my two granddaughters.
e. e. cummings describes bettyandisbel dancing, and while three-week-old Etta is too young to move about on her own, her older sister Esmé, just under two, makes up for it. She has learned to jump and takes every opportunity to do so. She also loves costumes and yesterday, at the local Jewish Community Center, insisted on being dressed up as Little Elmo.
As she cavorted about the playroom in a large sleeper suit with Elmo’s head as her hood, I thought of Little Toby in John Cheever’s short story “Country Husband”:
He loops the magic cape over his shoulders and, climbing onto the footboard of his bed, he spreads his arms and flies the short distance to the floor, landing with a thump that is audible to everyone in the house but himself.
The imagination soars higher than facts on the ground at this age.
And as Esmé was dancing, in the background the goat-footed balloon man–which is to say Pan, the Greek god of animal spirits–was whistling.
[in Just-]
By e. e. cummngs
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee